Answer: As for churches, I believe none of us feel strange about it, because we often go to the church to study the Bible, have meetings and pray to God since we believed in the Lord. Naturally, we all think the place where people get together to pray and study the Bible is the church of God and we can get the supply of life if we often worship God in the church. But is the fact just like what we think? What kind of church is exactly the church of God and can make people get supply of life?
We believers in God all want to pursue the truth, get God’s salvation and finally get rid of the corruptions so as to be gained by God. Thus, the church belonging to God is made up of the people chosen by God and those who truly believe in God, love the truth, pursue the truth and have the work of the Holy Spirit. These people get together to read God’s words and worship God. Through performing the duty as a creation and experiencing the work of God, they understand more and more of the truth and their spiritual life keep growing up step by step. Finally, they are qualified to receive God’s salvation.
Therefore, we should grasp two points when we measure whether a church belongs to the church of God. Firstly, we should know what kind of people they are in this church. If they are pursuers of truth, then they believe in God is to gain the truth and God’s salvation. Because of loving the truth, they can read God’s words carefully and love fellowshipping the truth. After believing in God for several years, they can understand many aspects of truths, get some knowledge of God, and have the true heart of obeying and worshiping God. No matter what they encounter, regardless of persecutions and tribulations, difficulties in life and unfortune of family or some trials like disasters and serious illness, they can still be loyal to expend to God, perform the duty as a creation and to bear the witness to God. Even they have some transgressions, they can still protect the interests of church and the work of God, preserve the principles of truth and get rid of the shackles and constraints of other people. With the complete obedience to God’s work and the true fear of God, they finally become the people who know God and stand testimonies for God. In the meantime, the leaders of the church are all pursuers of truth. These people play leading roles in the church; they water and supply God’s chosen people, using the truth to solve problems so that brothers and sisters in the church can get real supply of life. Then this church belongs to the church of God.
Secondly, we should see whether this church has the work of the Holy Spirit. Those churches who have no Holy Spirits are all false churches, religious places. The feature of such churches is that the sermons given by these church leaders and preachers are always very dry and have no new enlightenment. Besides, their prayers are without the illumination of God, so brothers and sisters can’t get any enjoyment from their meetings. Some church leaders just manage to find some materials online to deal with the meetings. In some large meetings, outwardly there are many people attending and the preachers have a lot to preach, but what they preach is just the Bible doctrines and stories or various information to deceive believers. The followers listen to their preaching for many years but didn’t get any supply of life. They are very weak in spirit and lack the faith in God and real love to God. Some of them can still follow the worldly evil trends and indulge themselves in sins and relishes that sin but don’t have any will to repent. As, such, we can see these churches don’t have Holy Spirit’s work. If those who have some special gifts and do well in speaking lead churches, they just focus on preach the Bible knowledge to exalt and testify themselves so that the believers can worship them. They neither lead believers to practice and experience God’s words so as to gain the heart of fearing God and shunning evil, nor exalt and testify God and bring believers bef0re God, but just use the letters of the Bible and religious rules to control and bind believers. Moreover, these believers just follow them without any discernment and only want to eat their fill. They have no fear of and obedience to God, nor some knowledge of their own corruption, let alone real repentance. After several years’ following, they just understand some Bible letters and doctrines but don’t have any improvement in their spiritual growth.
Thus, we can get a conclusion that such “churches” can’t be called churches, but religious places. In addition, if people just believe in God in religious places, they can never gain the truth, let a urch belongs to God’s church is to see whether it has the work of the Holy Spirit’s work or not; whether it is made up by true believers and pursuers of truth. According to these two principles, it’s very easy for us to discern what kind of church can be called God’s church.